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In Memoriam: Michael Dowd
After a life of convention-challenging thought and leadership, Michael Dowd has left us, quietly in his sleep last Saturday. There is a lot to say about Rev. Dowd. He was certainly a big thinker and he, with his wife Connie Barlow, was a pioneer in the framing of the very story of the Universe and evolution themselves as a grand spiritual narrative. He was also a “post-Doomer”, believing that climate change, ecological and civilizational collapse are inevitable and promoting a philosophical position that eschewed big-picture hope, but rather chose small acts of bettering the world immediately around us. I disagreed with him on this, and we had a couple of…
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On Community
Hey, folks. In case you just joined us: We are working to build something here: a community. A community. People of common heart and shared values. Even though we–Atheopagans–are spread far apart. Even though it usually takes the Internet for us to be together. In many ways, it’s an alien thing to me. I didn’t grow up in a community and I’m feeling my way forward now to figure out what it is about. I don’t have a feel for it, much as I wish I did. So: what is a community? I think it’s a place where you know to your bones that you belong. Where the people care…
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Planning for Eerie Season
October is nearly here! The witchiest, gothiest, most autumntacular time of year is once again approaching. If you’re like me, October requires some time commitment and advanced planning in order to get every sanguine drop out of the season. So here is a description of all the stuff I do in October to steep myself in its gothy goodness. Throughout the month, I watch movies: I like to watch creepy, campy and thematic films in October on my way to Halloween. Perennial favorites include Practical Magic, The Others, Jacob’s Ladder, The Sixth Sense, various Hammer Horror films (lots of Christopher Lee!), classics like James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,…
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A Paradoxical Trip
So, I’m flying today, to help the environment. Seriously. I’m on a work trip to lobby in Washington, D.C., meeting with Congressional and Senatorial offices to promote wilderness protections and promote the designation of three new National Monuments. If ever there were a net-benefit reason to put that carbon in the atmosphere, this would be it. Wild lands are essential for biodiversity, and sequester tremendous volumes of atmospheric carbon when they are managed for thriving ecosystems. My organization, CalWild, is the preeminent voice for protection of wild areas on public lands in the state of California–an internationally-recognized biological diversity hot spot. California also plays an outsized role in climate policy…
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Harvestide
The season of the Harvest Sabbath is upon us again, and it is time for celebration and stock-taking! This Sabbath sometimes gets short shrift, coming as it does on the heels of every Pagan’s favorite witchy month. But it’s an important observance time and a meaningful holiday. Here are some thoughts about what Harvest means and how to celebrate it. To me, this time is the time of celebrating abundance. The winter vegetables are pouring out of the gardens now and where I live, the grape harvest and processing (“The Crush”) fills the air in the rural areas with the smell of fermenting wine. Harvest fairs take place at this…
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The Long Swing into Darkness
The sky has gone hard blue now, and the fog cycle has begun to stutter. Summer is leaving, it’s in the air, and I can feel the good cozy days of colored leaves and the spooky season on the horizon. The angle of the light has changed, the full blaze of the solstice is far behind, and here in the season of Dimming, we have warm, wan, still days before us for awhile yet. Ironically, this is a time of year that feels kind of pregnant to me, even though it is headed towards the dying of the year: it is the burgeoning growth of the Sacred Dark, a fertile…
